How to properly power a SW-616 1 Watt RGB Prolight LED?

[Tekka]

I recently took apart a SW-616 saber for the sound board and had a blade and the LED left over and thought about making a small yoda-ish size saber out of junk i had laying around. the only problem is i have no idea how to properly power this thing. i heard that this led was underpowered since the makers decided to not use a heatsink.

Is this LED even worth making a half ass saber out of it? I know each color requires different voltage so that means each color gets a different resistor but i have no idea what resistors i should use.

If i properly heatsink this thing i should be able to give it a little more power to make it brighter right?

Heres the Datasheet I got on it, I plan on using 3-4 1.2 NiMH AA batteries

I'm looking to get the LED as bright as possible without overpowering it and shortening it's life.

[Moordak]

Are you sure that's the right specs on it? I swear I thought the max ma was in the 500-550 range. I'm driving one with a Corbin driver at the moment with some 250 ohm pots. I used some Artic Silver 5 between it and the heatsink to help with the heat. I'm going to guess and say it's been on a total of 5 hours so far and hasn't blown yet though I haven't checked to see how much current is going to each color.

Speaking of, can anyone recommend a relatively cheap tester that will let me check ma up to like 1500?

[xwingband]

I suspect that's the wrong datasheet. This is the correct one:

http://www.led-bulbs.com/html/prolig...-3LUX_v2.1.pdf

It has 350mA of solid current as the max and peaked up to 500mA. Peaked meaning pwm drivers and such... so for resistors you'd be overdriving at 500mA.